A mobile user may have a desire to easily and, perhaps, unobtrusively surveil or monitor a remote location for the occurrence of a condition or event (“event”). The mobile user may have a concomitant desire to seek advice, or to request third-party intervention with the remote location event. Currently, remote surveillance and monitoring activities (“surveillance”) are undertaken by a third-party agent on behalf of a user, a business, and the like, typically under a for-fee service agreement. A service agreement also may specify control or intervention (“intervention”) activities to be undertaken by the agent on behalf of the mobile user. Under such an arrangement, the third-party agent performs surveillance and intervention (“S&I”) functions substantially autonomously from the mobile user contracting for these services, tending to narrow the scope of intervention functions that may be undertaken. Typically, the third-party agent, after a delay, notifies the mobile user of an observed event, or of an intervention action taken in response to the agent's observation. The mobile user may have no opportunity to interact with, or to direct, remote interveners as the event evolves. As is typical of current for-fee S&I service agreements, the surveillance assets are specified and deployed under the exclusive control of the third-party agent. Also, the provisions of many S&I agreements are defined by inclusion, that is, only those services, which are specified in the S&I service agreement are available to the mobile user. Examples include the scope of S&I services provided, the number of employees engaged and assigned, the communication and notification infrastructure and protocols used, and the surveillance assets deployed and installed. An incremental expansion of S&I services can be obtained, if at all, at an additional cost to the mobile user.
Conventional third-party S&I installations and services may be expensive or may lack the flexibility or intervention characteristics desired by a mobile user who desires, for example, occasional, event-driven, or multiple-site surveillance and intervention services. Indeed, the sheer number of potentially monitored locations, and the range of events suitable for ad hoc intervention, can be staggering. In a great number of instances, a mobile user wants the ability to make first-hand observations, to decide what action, if any, ought to be taken for a given event, and to select which response may be most desirable, given the nature of what is observed. In many cases, the mobile user may prefer to perform ad-hoc remote surveillance personally, without the burden or expense of a commercial third-party vendor, and to initiate and direct requests for intervention, with remotely positioned friends, family, employees, contractors, agents, fire safety personnel, or law enforcement, acting as remote interveners.
Accordingly, there is a need for mobile communications appliances and methods that satisfy the need for versatile, low-cost surveillance and intervention implementations that offer the mobile user the capabilities of remote location surveillance and, when desired, of remote event intervention.